RANDOM QUESTION:

Getting To Know You (Part 2).

The tears started to come at that part. Xavier squeezed my hand in reassurance as if telling me 'its okay'. Finding courage to speak, I continued.

"Turns out she had leukemia," I said stoically. "My parents were a mess. Mr. and Mrs. Carter tried their best to help them through these trying times but nothing seemed to help. That day, I decided to hold myself together at any cost for their sake. Lizzie was admitted to the hospital the next day. School was terrible. I was always quiet, trying my best not to just burst out into tears. Silence became my solace while football became Austin's.

Lizzie's illness took a toll on him too, after all she was like a sister to him. All his anger he channelled into sports and he became the great football player he is today. All of us tried to persuade Lizzie into joining school with us. We weren't sure how long her body would support her so we wanted her to experience everything she could. She flat out declined because according to her, going to school would only give her hope and hope was dangerous for a person in a situation like her. Mom ultimately home schooled her.

During this time, I also made new friends- Simon, Jamie, Sky and Jen. When we were 16, Jerko randomly came to me one day and confessed that he liked Jen. Now the problem with that was that Jen was dating this guy called Chad. That was the stupidest decision she had ever made because he constantly kept cheating on her.

By this time Jen, Jerko and I had become really close so after a big fight with Chad one day, she went to Jerko to get her mind off of things. One thing led to another and next thing, they slept together. Austin had gained quite the heartbreaker reputation so some chick obsessed with him somehow got a picture of Jen getting out of his house early morning and sent it to the entire class. Now thankfully, her face wasn't visible in the picture or else everyone would start calling her names for 'cheating on Chad', ironically, the same guy who wasn't faithful to her for even one second.

There was no stopping to the rumours, and the people of our school become really good detectives if need be so it was only time before people found out it was her. So for the sake of both my best friends, I told everyone that the girl whose picture was taken was me. People immediately ate up the gossip since they all knew how close Jerko and I were. The two of us fake dated for about two months while Jen broke up with Chad- which was by the way the most talked about breakup at our school- and she and Jerko got together secretly. Oh, and by the way, they broke up a year ago too.

Now we also had a guy called Ryan Richardson in our grade, star quarterback. He was another guy who was practically worshipped at our school and he was also the one I had a crush on for the longest of times."
I shivered in disgust as I said that.

"Anyway, turns out he felt the same about me. One day while I was waiting for Jerko's practice to get over, he came and started speaking to me. We spoke for a while and then out of nowhere, he kissed me. The entire football team saw it and rumours started floating around about how I didn't even wait for a week after my breakup and started going out with another guy. I was called a slut, a gold digger, a whore and every other vulgar and bad term out there. Jen and Jerko repeatedly told me to tell everyone that it was Jen who Austin was sneaking around with now that she had broken up with Chad and Jen and Jerko were a couple but I said no. I didn't want to drag them into it.

Ryan and I went out for a couple of dates. He was my first kiss but turns out he wasn't the saint the entire school and I thought him to be and I got to see his true face at Jerko's birthday last year."

My fists clenched in anger as I recalled everything that happened on that God awful night.

*Flashback Begins*

"Jen, this dress makes me look like a stripper," I said as I looked at myself in Jen's mirror. I was wearing a tight red dress that stopped right at my knees, had no sleeves and showed too much of my cleavage.